


do not go gentle

by little_giddy



Category: Spartacus: Blood and Sand, Spartacus: Vengeance
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-22
Updated: 2012-04-22
Packaged: 2017-11-04 03:53:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/389446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/little_giddy/pseuds/little_giddy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of short drabbles about some of the Spartacus characters and their relationships with death and life. Hence, spoilers. Lots of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

i. oh that our eyes will be open [Mira]

Mira has long known the weight of the collar around her neck. She remembers being sent to the bedroom of the young man of the house months before his fifteenth birthday. 

(He knows when that is, of course. She believes she was born nineteen years before - perhaps eighteen.)

Her stomach had rolled as she stepped into the room. He was as yet uninterested, the young man who would soon be entitled to an extra garment and all that free men could take. Like a child, he’d asked for a story. Something scandalous - all the attention paid to them, you slaves must hear all. 

Mira spun him a fine tale, one never too close to his own company to be tested. Slaves hear all, but to be known for revealing such is to betray those who wear collars like her own and any chance of advancement in one deed. He likes details, the young man - the one in whom all of Rome will invest itself: Mira knows their world from its underside and knows it to be built on the inevitable successes of teenage boys such as his and the backs of slaves such as hers. He stops her to demand further details when she does not tell an intricate enough lie and sends her away when he tires of the game. 

It settled over her slowly that he knew she told him falsehoods and took his pleasure in trying to find the seams of them. Of course, to own such to the young man would be to end it, as part of his pleasure was believing she did not realise the game was played so. 

Of course, such inattention did not last. Could not, with all of Roman society to offer thrilling diversions for each passing hour, and Mira but one of those fashions for sampling. 

Mira thinks of these things when Numerius turns his thumb to the floor she and the others cleaned of dirt tracked in from the dusty sands only the day before. They will clean it of Varro’s blood the next day. 

What a thing it must be, to choose where to stop the tale.


	2. when it comes it will feel like a kiss [Spartacus]

Spartacus has stopped dreaming of the beloved dead.

In his dreams he has no name and a voice only to shout without purpose or result.

In his dreams enemies tell him of the homelands of his sisters and brothers in the fight and how they will burn them all, even if they win, even if they survive, even if they run. The men have Roman faces made of the carved features and empty eyes of every statue the rebellion has toppled. The women have red lips and wigs to the shoulder but empty, marble eyes. He feels hollow merely looking upon their assembled forms.

He wakes with the thought:

The only safe ones are the dead.

He thinks:

soon enough.


End file.
